Under Seige: poems for Gaza by Mahmoud Darwish

Under Siege by Mahmoud Darwish

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time Close to the gardens of broken shadows, We do what prisoners do, And what the jobless do: We cultivate hope. *** A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent For we closely watch the hour of victory: No night in our night lit up by the shelling Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us In the darkness of cellars. *** Here there is no “I”. Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay. *** On the verge of death, he says: I have no trace left to lose: Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand. Soon I shall penetrate my life, I shall be born free and parentless, And as my name I shall choose azure letters… *** You who stand in the doorway, come in, Drink Arabic coffee with us And you will sense that you are men like us You who stand in the doorways of houses Come out of our morningtimes, We shall feel reassured to be Men like you! *** When the planes disappear, the white, white doves Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves Fly off. Ah, if only the sky Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me]. *** Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel Soldiers piss-under the watchful eye of a tank- And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass… *** [To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way to find one’s identity again. *** The siege is a waiting period Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm. *** Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment Were it not for the visits of the rainbows. *** We have brothers behind this expanse. Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep. Then, in secret, they tell each other: “Ah! if this siege had been declared…” They do not finish their sentence: “Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us.” *** Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day. And ten wounded. And twenty homes. And fifty olive trees… Added to this the structural flaw that Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas. *** A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved For my clothing is drenched with his blood. *** If you are not rain, my love Be tree Sated with fertility, be tree If you are not tree, my love Be stone Saturated with humidity, be stone If you are not stone, my love Be moon In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon [So spoke a woman to her son at his funeral] *** Oh watchmen! Are you not weary Of lying in wait for the light in our salt And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound Are you not weary, oh watchmen? *** A little of this absolute and blue infinity Would be enough To lighten the burden of these times And to cleanse the mire of this place. *** It is up to the soul to come down from its mount And on its silken feet walk By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime Friends who share the ancient bread And the antique glass of wine May we walk this road together And then our days will take different directions: I, beyond nature, which in turn Will choose to squat on a high-up rock. *** On my rubble the shadow grows green, And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat He dreams as I do, as the angel does That life is here…not over there. *** In the state of siege, time becomes space Transfixed in its eternity In the state of siege, space becomes time That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow. *** The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day And questions me: Where were you? Take every word You have given me back to the dictionaries And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz. *** The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse I did not look For the virgins of immortality for I love life On earth, amid fig trees and pines, But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure. *** The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me. I first, I the first one! *** The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed. I put a gazelle on my bed, And a crescent of moon on my finger To appease my sorrow. *** The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty! *** Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health, The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease: The disease of hope. *** And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me. *** Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the Blackness of this tunnel! *** Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces: Greetings to my apparition. *** My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me, A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees A marble epitaph of time And always I anticipate them at the funeral: Who then has died…who? *** Writing is a puppy biting nothingness Writing wounds without a trace of blood. *** Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall To another like a gazelle The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid, And that we are the guests of eternity.

Identity Card

Record ! I am an Arab And my identity card is number fifty thousand I have eight children And the nineth is coming after a summer Will you be angry?

Record ! I am an Arab Employed with fellow workers at a quarry I have eight children I get them bread Garments and books from the rocks… I do not supplicate charity at your doors Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber So will you be angry?

Record ! I am an Arab I have a name without a title Patient in a country Where people are enraged My roots Were entrenched before the birth of time And before the opening of the eras Before the pines, and the olive trees And before the grass grew.

My father.. descends from the family of the plow Not from a privileged class And my grandfather..was a farmer Neither well-bred, nor well-born! Teaches me the pride of the sun Before teaching me how to read And my house is like a watchman’s hut Made of branches and cane Are you satisfied with my status? I have a name without a title !

Record ! I am an Arab You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors And the land which I cultivated Along with my children And you left nothing for us Except for these rocks.. So will the State take them As it has been said?!

Therefore ! Record on the top of the first page: I do not hate people Nor do I encroach But if I become hungry The usurper’s flesh will be my food Beware.. Beware.. Of my hunger And my anger !

I will continue to humanise even the enemy… The first teacher who taught me Hebrew was a Jew. The first love affair in my life was with a Jewish girl. The first judge who sent me to prison was a Jewish woman. So from the beginning, I didn’t see Jews as devils or angels but as human beings.

Scenes from Notre Musique directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film reflects on violence, morality, and the representation of violence in film, and touches especially on past colonialism and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this clip Mahmoud explains why he feels the need to be ‘the poet of Troy’.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman’s opinion of men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginnings of love, grass on a stone, mothers who live on a flute’s sigh and the invader’s fear of memories

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the waning days of September, a woman keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a pack of creatures, the applause of a people for those who face their end with a smile, and a tyrant’s fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth, the mother of all beginnings, the mothr of all endings. She was called Palestine. She came to be called Palestine. O Lady, because you are my Lady, I am worthy of life.

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Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopaedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way.

- Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Remember what you have seen, because everything forgotten returns to the circling winds.